A typical contact center algorithmically assigns contacts arriving at the contact center to agents available to handle those contacts. At times, the contact center may have agents available and waiting for assignment to inbound or outbound contacts (e.g., telephone calls, Internet chat sessions, email). At other times, the contact center may have contacts waiting in one or more queues for an agent to become available for assignment.
In some typical contact centers, contacts are assigned to agents based on time of arrival, and agents receive contacts based on the time when those agents became available. This strategy may be referred to as a “first-in, first-out,” “FIFO,” or “round-robin” strategy. In other typical contact centers, other strategies may be used, such as “performance-based routing,” or a “PBR,” strategy.
Typical contact centers preferentially minimize overall agent idle time and overall contact waiting time. To that end, if contacts are waiting in a queue, a contact will be assigned to an agent soon after an agent becomes available for assignment. Similarly, if agents are idle, waiting for contacts to arrive, an agent will be assigned to a contact soon after a contact becomes available for assignment.
However, if a contact center uses a pairing strategy that is designed to choose among multiple possible pairings, it may be inefficient to choose the first available pairing for the sake of minimizing contact hold time or agent idle time.
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there may be a need for a system that enables improving the amount of choice available to improve the efficiency and performance of pairing strategies that are designed to choose among multiple possible pairings.